The Republican Agenda on Health Care and Immigration

It seems to me that the Republican Party's callous attitude towards Immigration and Health Care Reform is clearly opposite the way of fairness and mercy, and that makes it so much easier for me to know where to stand on political affairs. I am confident and clear in my soul in saying I stand against the Republican Party on the matter of how to deal with Immigration, because their stand does not show compassion towards the stranger and outcast in our land. With regard to Health Care Reform, if you have much experience at all in this society, you know many people who have suffered deeply from not having health care insurance or affordable health care insurance. To think we can simply go on and ignore that, seems very, very callous.

We have enough of a conscience in our country to require treatment of uninsured persons in emergency situations, but we aren't honest enough to admit that so many of those who appear with emergencies are the uninsured who could not afford to get regular check-ups or get medical care for a problem before it became life-threatening. Truth is, in many cases, the lack of care is devastating. A woman had symptoms of a serious gastro-intestinal problem, but was still in a probationary period at work, so that she had no medical insurance. By the time she got her medical insurance through work and went to get checked, her cancer was so far advanced that all the doctors could try to do was try some last ditch efforts at chemotherapy and control her pain for the last six months of her life. Now, this woman would almost certainly have died from this cancer, but with early detection/treatment, she might very well have lived two or three or four or more years like another man that I know who had the same type of cancer which was treated aggressively when discovered when symptoms first arose. He had health care insurance. Of course, we can't know exactly how it would have gone for the woman mentioned above, but don't we want her to have as good a chance as the man mentioned? And, aren't an extra two, three, four years of life something of inestimable value?

I commend Barack Obama for having the fortitude to shake up the status quo in this area of health care reform. I have not been terribly impressed with his efforts in Immigration Reform (the last president had a good plan for this, but couldn't sell it to his own party). But, back to Health Care Reform. And, all this complaining about it happening in "back-room" deals! We have so little understanding of how laws are actually made in this country and how politics works at every level (or maybe we just like to pretend). It has been hurtful to the Obama administration to have been as "transparent" as it has been. This country will never accept the way laws are made if it has to see the truth. The public would be shocked if it knew how criminal cases are negotiated and resolved as well. Of course, people make deals. As long as they are not illegal deals, it is both acceptable and necessary in politics and law practice.

Though I certainly am not qualified to address the issues on health care, I certainly am concerned when over 30 million of my fellow citizens in this country have no health care insurance. And, I want to support those who don't want to tolerate this intolerable situation any longer.

The attitudes of citizens around this country on immigration vary greatly. Many of those who are fairly quiet people believe in showing the utmost compassion and decency towards illegal aliens who are here working hard and trying to live among us in peace. But, those who are loud don't agree. The loud people most always get their positions on the news, but loud people are usually wrong in life. They just dont' take enough time to listen and observe what is going on. They are too busy talking and wanting others to observe them.

Political parties are generally dominated by "loud people." Maybe there are some quieter Republicans who are saying some better things. If they are, they certainly need better press agents.

The Gospel of Life and the Gospel of Death

In "The Didache," which is a document of the very early Church (around 150 A.D.) it says: "There are two ways - the way of life and the way of death - and there is a great difference between the two ways." It goes on to set out the things of life and the ways of death.

I am struck today of how we in the Church need to return to a dynamic moral teaching, a moral teaching that arises from the truth of life and the love of life, and not from the fear of life. And, a moral teaching that takes a strong stand against the ways of death.

The ways of death are envy and haste and arrogance and self-seeking and hatred and unfaithfulness and lust and greed. The ways of life are patience and self-acceptance and love and forgiveness and simplicity.

I am sick of the ways of death and have increasingly realized that I have not been able to communicate the ways of life to many young people I have worked with over the years. More on this later. My dog needs to go outside.

Snow Days and Why I Haven't Grown Up

I am sitting here on Monday afternoon, with six inches of snow on the ground. My wife and I both got a "snow day" off from work. I have been out for a couple of walks in the snow.

But, last night I didn't know for sure, so I stayed up late to see if it was really going to snow like the weather forecast had said. I feel asleep around 1 a.m., woke up at 2:30 a.m. and saw a serious amount of snow on the ground. I love snow!

I remember so many good times when I was a child, checking the temperature, knowing it was well below freezing and then knowing that the snow that was starting was going to stick on the roads. We had four or five years of that when I was 8-12. And, we sledded and sledded until we were so cold and tired that we could barely walk home. Those were great times. As I got towards the end of middle school, it quit snowing, or at least that's how I remember it.

When it snowed a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday evening, I took off for a good long walk that night, because when it snows, I always want to get out into it.

I love the way it looks when it snows, and I love the way it smells and feels outside. I guess I have never grown up in some ways, and I'm glad I haven't. I took a small sled down part of my backyard - not any real sledding like I am going to be ready for if it snows again. But, I am still a kid when it snows. I am glad that I still feel that way about it. It makes me feel good about life.

What is Preaching?

I started preaching in early summer of 1989. I was 28 years old and had just become the pastor of two small rural Presbyterian churches in South Carolina. After 17 years of preaching each Sunday in three different pastorates, I have shared the pulpit with the Reverend Sonya McAuley-Allen since the summer of 2006. With Sonya moving at the end of this month, I will be preaching every Sunday again as before.

I have stacks of handwritten sermon notes from over the years. Even though I don't hand=write anything else, I still hand-write most sermons. It is just an old habit. One thing has changed in the past couple of years. Unless I think it was a particularly good sermon, I simply throw away my notes when I am done. I had previously kept all sermon notes. Over the years, a sermon has come to seem less about the notes written in preparation, and more about the communication (or lack) when preached.

And,sermon notes,even when I am preaching, don't seem like "the sermon" anymore. The notes are preparation, but not the only preparation for preaching. There is the readiness of the heart and mind and openness to the moment of preaching. For me, right now, I am hoping to communicate in a very basic way with those who are gathered with me for worship. I don't want to let worship services come and go without making a sincere effort to speak a true word. And, truth to me is beginning to seem like something very simple, even primitive. The many thoughts have to give way to one thought; the jumbled feelings have to give way to a peace that can hold all feelings.

When I reach this way of being during preaching, something good seems to happen. When I don't, even the most interesting ideas seem to fall not only on "dead ears," but to rise from a "dead heart."

Of course, there is always "life" in me - in my heart and soul and body. But, that "life" when cut off from the life of God, has a deathly character to it. Life with the character of death is anxious life, bitter life, envious life, despairing life. Life in union with God's life is creative life, peaceful life, hopeful and purposeful life.

January 9 and Getting to Listen to a Sermon

It is Sunday, January 9, 2011, and I will be assisting with the worship service this morning as my co-pastor, Rev. Sonya McAuley-Allen preaches. Since I will be preaching the next two Sundays and since Rev. Allen is moving to North Carolina at the end of this month, this will be the last Sunday to hear Rev. Allen for some time. And, then we are back to my voice in the pulpit every week.

So, I look forward this morning. to listening, before I start speaking so regularly again during worship. It has really helped me to have someone else sharing the preaching these past couple of years, because it has reminded me that everything begins with listening, not with speaking.

The Strange World of the Bible

Karl Barth wrote an essay in the early 20th century entitled: "The Strange New World of the Bible," reporting what could be understood as a mystical experience had by a liberal theologian in reading the Bible. Or, at least, that's how I understand it. The Reformation began in the early 1500's with Martin Luther's mystical experience while reading the Holy Scriptures, and the Protestant tradition has at its very center a cognitive/emotional experience. Barth, like Luther before him, never referred to himself as a mystic, but tried very hard to distance himself from mystics who tended to rely on direct spiritual experience but felt little need to explain such experiences in relation to either scripture or tradition. Clearly Barth was going through an intense rereading of the Reformed theologians, Luther and especially Calvin as he was reading Scripture with new eyes. For Protestants, the distancing is first of all from those whose experiences are not woven from the fabric of a genuine encounter with Scripture, and for Catholics, the distancing is first of all from those whose experiences are not woven from the fabric of a genuine encounter with tradition (the beginning of which is recorded in scripture. But, I get the idea that Luther and Barth protested a little too hard against mystics, when the essential transformative ideas of both arose out of a somewhat unanticipated being taken by surprise by the overwhelming "otherness" and "graciousness" of God's presence. Each man was probably on guard against mystical excesses because both had the gift of the mystic, to see into new meanings and to be open to new revelations from God's Spirit.

About the nature of Scripture as "holy ground," that has the potential to transform and open a person to the presence of the living God, Barth has much to say in the essay referred to above. I wish I could find my book that contained that essay. The book is called: "The Word of God and the Word of Man."

There is a certain "otherness" or "strangeness" that we experience in the Bible when we truly enter into its language, thought-forms and way of making sense of life. But, there is also a certain "otherness" that we experience in reading the Church's writings from a distant time and place that can carry that same primal tradition that we meet in the Bible. When I read what Ambrose has written 1700 years ago, I recognize some elements common to my way of seeing life, but I also meet some elements of thought which are foreign to me and awaken my interest. For example,I begin to think that if I can stay with Ambrose's writings a while, I may come to new understandings of God and human life and myself. But, there is something raw/primal about the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures preserve for us from different periods of time a snapshot of how human beings were making sense of God's presence in the world through recollecting revelatory experiences, reflecting on them, and using the insights learned to try and make sense of human life. And, the Scriptures also bear witness to the chaos of human life that is in tension with any effort to make sense of it. The Scriptures as a whole are a many-leveled, diverse sociological and theological record of the history of two religious movements: that of the Hebrew people who became the Jewish people, and that of the Jewish followers of Jesus who grew into the multi-racial/ethnic Church of Jesus Christ.

Post-College, preseminary neoorthodox conservatism

I am not quite ready to tell these stories, but will get them in order soon. Of course, this may not make sense to anyone but me, but I write in case it might make sense to someone else. If not, I will at least have a better self-understanding before I move on in this blog. So, next time, I will recall a couple of episodes from this period.